Samsung continues to be unstoppable and is just about to open a new handset factory to cope with demand.

It is Samsung's second handset plant in Vietnam. Over the weekend the company said that it was in final talks with the Vietnamese government over the establishment of the $700 million factory.

Samsung Electronics Vietnam (SEV) is considering the northern Vietnamese city of Thai Nguyen, which currently depends on agriculture, as the location for the second plant. Thai Nguyen’s location provides great accessibility to Vietnam’s major cities, a Samsung official said.

Thai Nguyen is some 70 kilometers from the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi and the construction of a set of highways linking Hanoi to regional cities is expected to be completed around 2015. Samsung has been operating a handset plant at the Yen Phong Industrial Zone in Bac Ninh. Since 2009, it has been leading Samsung’s overseas handset plants in terms of production, pumping out 150 million per year, which accounts for one-fourth of the company’s yearly output.

Ever interested in expanding into third world countries, Lenovo will open its first PC production plant in the United States with operations expected to begin in 2013.

The plant will be built in Whitsett, North Carolina, and make Think-branded laptop and desktop PCs, tablets and servers aimed at the U.S. market. The company said that it will create 115 jobs in Whitsett which ten years ago had a population of 686 people and its own horse.

Lenovo has invested in new plants and manufacturing joint ventures in China, Brazil so the US was an obvious place after that. The company is set to overtake the maker of expensive printer ink, HP later this year as the world's largest PC maker.

Well, not really Bugs Bunny of course, but given Foxconn's history of mistreating its workers and playing dumb about it, we wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it blamed it on fictional characters. Heck, Apple's confirmation would get them some serious support anyways.

Anyhow, Foxconn's plant in northern Chinese city of Taiyuan resumed production, after being closed for a day over a mass brawl. The official story first talked about a brawl between workers, but the company spokesperson seems to have contradicted this by saying that investigation is still ongoing.

The company said the riots were 2,000 strong while state-owned media says 5,000 police officers were dispatched in response. These, along with 40 injured persons and plenty of damage to the factory, are pretty much the only things that can be confirmed.

Foxconn’s story was that workers from Shandong province started a fight with their colleagues from the Henan province. It claims the fight subsequently escalated into a brawl, prompting the police reaction.

However, unofficial reports claimed that the riots started after guards beat up a worker. A user on the country’s microblog site Sina Weibo claimed that four or five guards nearly beat a worker to death.

Another post claimed two workers from the Henan province were beaten up, causing others to set bed quilts on fire and throw them out the dorm windows. The posts, coupled with some photos, have since been censored, which is a nice way of saying a sock was shoved down people’s throats.

Foxconn's spokesperson Louis Woo conceded that guards who took part in the brawl are contractors whose attitude was not too good, but did not really confirm the brawl was their doing. In fact, Reuters says that its own reporter was roughed up by guards in front of the factory.

The plant reportedly does magnesium alloy-based parts for mobile phones and cars, LED lighting and heat conduction products. Some reports claimed it processed the back casing for Apple’s iPhone 5 and spoke of a combination of strict management and serious over-time work. Li Qiang, of the New York-based China Labor Watch, said the whole Apple production chain has problems, as the company has sudden launches that quickly result in shortages and in turn "place extreme pressures on workers."

The same plant was hit by a strike back in March after the company’s promise of pay rise turned out false. Somehow, it seems the company would've preferred the workers who jumped off of roofs, but do not doubt that Bugs Bunny will answer for his misdeeds. And good job with inspections Apple but the next time profits outweigh human life, I’d at least appreciate an honest mail about it.

Nokia Siemens Networks is opening an assembly line in Brazil with contract manufacturer Flextronics International.

The company announced that the plant will build next generation mobile phone networks and should start shipping fourth-generation (4G) wireless equipment at the start of October. The idea is that it will help local carriers build out networks for the 2014 World Cup.

Ken Wirth, head of the Americas region for Nokia Siemens said that the company is looking to do is align its manufacturing capacity close to the markets that we're selling in. This lowers transport costs, tariffs and any other things that pop up.

Brazil issued 4G broadcast licenses in June stipulating at least 60 percent Brazilian content in the hardware installed.Nokia said that demand from four Brazilian operators starting up their 4G networks will be enough to justify the local manufacturing capacity for the next 12 to 18 months.

There was a time when the name Nokia was synonymous with the mobile phone world, although these days you’ll hardly hear it mentioned among top dogs. Now, Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop broke some bad news for employees and investors alike, including new layoffs, closing of the company’s only plant and higher than expected Q2 2012 loss.

In an attempt to save itself, the company will cut 10,000 jobs worldwide, including the 3,700 from the its only and soon-to-be-closed plant in Salo, Finland. This brings the total number of layoffs to 40,000 since Elop was appointed CEO in 2010 - every third worker has since gotten the boot.

Nokia has lost serious ground to Apple and Samsung, and rightly so since it really has nothing to compare to, let alone lock horns, their flagship products. Nokia screwed up bad when it comes to its smartphone strategy, but it’s apparently losing in the cheaper, basic phone markets as well.

This brought about a second profit warning in only nine weeks and a warning of a worse than expected loss in Q2 2012. Although Nokia looked to its Lumia phones in hope of better times, the sales weren’t as hoped.

The company seems to be in dire need of a miracle, as the company’s stock has plummeted 70+ percent since it made a switch to Windows Mobile in February. Analysts haven’t been overly kind with their outlooks, but seem to agree that the ongoing restructuring will, if not stop, then at least break the fall somewhat.

Insurgents working for Hamas have fired rockets on Kiryat Gat, home to a huge Intel factory.

No one was injured, and the Israeli defence force retaliated with an aerial strike. One of the missiles exploded at a cattle barn outside of the city.

Kiryat Gat is halfway between Be’er Sheva, the capital of the Negev, and Rehovot, the southern edge of metropolitan Tel Aviv. Hamas left Kiryat Gat alone since Israel’s counterterrorist Operation Cast Lead campaign two and a half years ago.

Another rocket exploded between Ashkelon and Kiryat Gat. Hamas has increased the number of its rocket attacks in the past month, attacking Israel with four times the number of missiles than it did in June.

However managing to hit a high profile target like the huge Intel plant might get the insurgents some attention. Fortunately they have not sorted out that targeting problem yet.

An application to the Israeli government has indicated that Intel wants further expansion of its fab in Kiryat Gat. The plan is to produce in two or three years silicon wafers with the innovative 15-nanometer technology.

If the upgrade is carried out, Intel's Kiryat Gat fab will become one of the multinational's most advanced fabs. Chipzilla wants to invest $4.8 billion and expects a 600 million if it does it. Intel Israel will hire 1,300 additional employees.

The expansion plan follows another grant which was awarded six months ago, a $200 million grant to upgrade the Kiryat Gat fab. The upgrade is currently underway.

Word on the street is that the Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor is considering awarding the grant conditional on Intel opening its next fab in Beit She'an, in order to expand employment there.

Chipmaker Renesas has said that it will return to pre-quake supply capacity a month earlier than previously forecast.

Renesas expects its chip supply capacity to hit pre-disaster levels in late September. The outfit has restarted the factory damaged by the March 11 earthquake and has been recovering faster than initially predicted.

Renesas is a key supplier of chips that control multiple functions in cars. Its plant in Ibaraki Prefecture, north of Tokyo, was severely damaged by the quake It has taken two months to repair the facilities and test all the equipment. It resumed operations June 1.

It will take chips produced at the plant to get to customers. Early-stage chip fabrication alone takes several weeks to a few months. Then the chips have to be sent to chip assembly and packaging.

Chips fabricated at the Naka plant reaching customers in late September will be about 35 per cent of the pre-quake levels, but the company said that could make up the missing 65 per cent by delivering some orders from its other factories

Intel has confirmed that its yet-to-be-built D1X manufacturing facility is constructed to be compatible with equipment that processes large 450mm wafers.

The news is strange as many analysts do not thing that 450 mm wafers are economically viable. We guess the feeling is that they are too wide to dunk in your coffee. However it seems that the production facilities that process 450mm wafers are not economically feasible as you need to have the machines running all the time.

Only three companies in the industry have indicated they are remotely interested in manufacturing of chips on 450mm wafers within the next five years. They are Intel, Samsung Electronics and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Since there are only three customers, the outfits that will make the equipment to built the wafers are a little thin on the ground.

Intel claims that 450mm wafers will allow to produce chips at lower cost per chip. Xbit claims that Intel will not even try to wed 450mm wafers with 16nm manufacturing process and it is more likely that the company will only utilize appropriate equipment for chips made using 12nm or 10nm nodes.

The EU has approved Foxconn's purchase of a Dell assembly plant in ?ód?, 18 months after PC maker moved work there from Ireland.

The EU ruled that the deal would not affect competition in Europe as the overlaps between Foxconn and [Dell’s] Polish subsidiary in the assembly of electronic products are not so important as to significantly strengthen Foxconn's competitive position.

In 2009, PC maker Dell closed its manufacturing facility in Limerick, Ireland, and moved the work to ?ód?. It was later revealed that the Polish government subsidised the move with the approval of the EU.

The Polish government was so keen to attract US company Dell’s manufacturing business that it named a road leading up to the ?ód? plant the “Avenue of the Terror Victims of September 11". It probably will not work with Foxconn in charge. We wonder if the outfit will put the suicide nets around the plant, which are a common feature of its Chinese operations.